Most of us have listened to some sort of Blues music at some time or another in our lives. You can't have listened to popular music in the last seventy to eighty years in North America without hearing something, that's got at least a hint of that sound to it.
From Heavy Metal through to the standards of Frank Sinatra, the Blues have been the foundation that most pop music has built upon. Try and imagine what our world would sound like today if the Blues hadn't existed, and I think you'd hear the ringing sounds of silence.
Even the traditional Irish and Scottish ballads that were the backbone of the earliest country music wouldn't have made it out of the Appalachians without a generous dollop of blues music. It was that cross-pollination that gave us the earliest Country-Blues, which in turn led to Sun Records and a guy named Elvis.
The saddest part of the story of the blues has always been that the men and women, who were the writers and singers of this most influential music, toiled in obscurity and without recognition for most of their lifetimes. They'd see their songs and music being performed by young white musicians and never once received a dime for their work.
One of the sad truths of racial segregation and discrimination was that it denied a huge segment of the world the opportunity to hear some of the finest music and musicians perform. Even now early recordings of so many of these people are only in the hands of collectors or museums.
A new triple disc set by Document Records is a tiny step forward in changing that situation. Broadcasting The Blues: Black Blues in the Segregation Era is a wordy title for the set, but an apt one. Paul Oliver, the man who edited and compiled this disc, has been writing and broadcasting on the radio about blues since 1952. If you've never heard of him or his shows it's not surprising, they were on the B.B.C.
I've often wondered how people like Mick Jagger and John Lennon ever heard the blues over in England. They always talked about how much this style of music influenced them, but where on earth did they ever hear it for the first time. Well this must be part of the answer, Paul Oliver's radio shows.
Article comments
1 - Jon Sobel
Looks like a really interesting collection - guess I'll have to put this on my Amazon wish list.
2 - lumpy
Some of these guys are still alive and performing. Buying their current CDs or going to see them at a club is really the best and most direct way you can support them. And they've been dropping like flies in the last decade so do it soon.